All over again
by siriusondrun
Summary: Ryo is cleaning out boxes in his closet and finds a memento from the rockier part of his youth. Please read and reveiw.


Just a small drabblish thingy I came up with a week ago while failing to pay attention in American History. Hope you like!

Disclaimer: I own nothing but all seven volumes and the OVA of FAKE. Everything else belongs to the ultra-spiffletastic Matoh Sanami-san. And I have no idea whether 555-6948 is an actual phone number, and although I doubt it, it ain't mine either. Enjoy!

Ryo MacLean took the last of the boxes down from the top of his closet and sat down on his bed, ready to sort through the contents. He'd been cleaning out his closet since early that morning and was glad to nearly be done with it.

The box seemed to be the usual jumble of clothes and books from when he'd first moved out of his parent's old house in with his aunt Elena. Ryo smiled a little as he sifted through the clothing, recognizing the suit he'd worn to his parents' funeral.

"It's been a long time since I've seen this," he murmured to himself, lifting the suit out of the box and setting it aside. A slip of paper fluttered out of the pocket and into his lap as he moved the clothing. Ryo arched an eyebrow and picked it up.

It was a Ricola cough drop wrapper, folded in neatly in half. Ryo unfolded it and laughed out loud.

"What's that, babe?" Ryo jumped as his partner and lover, Dee Laytner, snuck up on him and flopped down onto the bed beside him, peering at the wrapper.

"Nothing, just a little memento from my childhood," Ryo said, looking down at the message scrawled in hasty ink writing on the back of the waxed paper:

_555-6948_

_Call if you need a sympathetic ear_

_-D_

"Who's this from?" Dee asked.

"I don't know his name," Ryo said. "I met him when I was going through some hard times and he helped me out."

"Oh, really?" Dee teased. Ryo felt his cheeks flushing and grinned down at the piece of paper, remembering that day in the cemetery.

_-10 years earlier-_

Randy MacLean stood over his parents' newly filled graves, trying to keep himself stoic around his gossiping relatives. He couldn't let them get to him or he knew he would break down completely. He gritted his teeth and set the flowers in his hands down on the coffins, then stood back next to his Aunt Elena.

"I need some air," he muttered to her. Elena nodded, patting him gently on the shoulder.

Randy strode off in the direction of the bench near the cemetery's fence and sat down on it with his knees pulled up to his chest. He wanted to cry, but somehow he knew that this would make his relatives twist the truth of his parents' deaths even more. He knew they would never do something shady like selling cocaine, but those old gossipmongers wouldn't listen to reasoning from an adult, much less a distraught eighteen-year-old boy they still regarded as a child.

Randy sighed and sniffled, suppressing the telltale prickling in the back of his eyes. He had to be strong through this. It's what his parents would have wanted.

"Hoo boy," said a male voice from beside him as a body flopped down onto the bench beside him. Randy looked over to see a long, lanky boy with dark hair and bright green eyes about a year younger than him reclined on the bench beside him. The boy sighed and stretched, then looked over at him. "You too, huh?" he said, jerking his head towards the rows of tombstones.

"Yeah," Randy said, nodding.

The boy nodded sympathetically. "Yeah, I hear yah," he said. "This place is so depressing." He lit a cigarette and took a long drag. "I bet half these people are upstairs yelling at their relatives to move on and stop crying already."

Randy laughed a little, sniffing and scrubbing his nose with the back of his hand. "Who are you here for?" he asked quietly.

"My dad and one of my best friends," the boy said, taking another long puff on the cigarette. "Visiting. It's been two years. You?"

"My parents," Randy said softly. "It's their funeral today."

"Ouch," the boy winced sympathetically. "That's rough."

"And to make it worse, all our relatives are talking about them like they're criminals or something right at their graves," Randy added, his voice suddenly dark with anger. "I mean, do they have no respect for the dead? Leave the gossip at home. The haven't even been gone two months and they're divvying up their possessions like they never existed and treating me like I'm invisible." His hands clenched into tight fists around his knees and he had the sudden urge to hit something just before he felt the gentle sweep of the other boy's sleeve against his cheek. He saw a wet stain on the cloth and lifted a hand to his face. He hadn't even realized he was crying. "So I had to get away from them," Randy said, not really sure why he was spilling all of this to a complete stranger. "I needed air."

"I can imagine," the boy said with an understanding nod. "That's got to be really rough for you. I mean, seriously, these were you parents and all of a sudden they're gone and all these pretentious jerks are acting like they never liked them to begin with. That's just frigging ugly behavior."

"Exactly," Randy nodded. The boy grinned and rummaged in his pocket for a minute, finally coming up with two sticks of mint gum, a ballpoint pen, and a cough drop wrapper. "Here," he said, offering up one of the pieces of gum. "Chewing on something usually calms me down."

"Thanks,' Randy said, accepting the gum and popping it into his mouth. The motion of mashing the rubbery substance between his teeth did alleviate some of the anger he felt towards his family, though nowhere near all of it. Meanwhile, the boy seemed to be doodling on the back of the wrapper, his own jaws working rapidly to spread the gum's strong mint flavor throughout his mouth, presumably to cover the smell of the cigarette.

Finally, after the two of them had sat in almost complete silence for a few minutes, Randy cleared his throat.

"I should probably go," he mumbled. "They'll wonder where I am. Um, thanks for listening to me."

The boy just grinned at him as two female voices rang out over the graveyard, one Randy recognized as Elena calling, "Randy!" and the other an older woman's voice calling, "Dee, you troublemaker, where have you gone?"

"I got to go," Randy and the boy said in unison. They stared at one another for a moment, then shared an awkward laugh.

"Well, see yah," the boy said, holding out his hand for Randy to shake. Randy shook it and when he pulled his hand back he found the cough drop wrapper, neatly folded into a rectangle, in his palm. The boy gave him a jaunty salute and jogged out of sight.

Randy looked down at the slip of paper and unfolded it to find that, instead of doodling on it as he had first thought, the boy had scrawled a note.

_555-6948_

_Call if you need a sympathetic ear_

_-D_

Randy stared at it for a moment, then smiled in spite of himself. "Strange kid," his murmured to himself, carefully refolding the note and stuffing it into his pocket as Elena came striding up to the bench.

"Hey, kiddo," she said. "You okay?"

Randy looked up at her with a small grin creasing his lips. "Yeah, I'm fine," he said. "Let's go."

Elena nodded and the two of them set off out of the cemetery, Randy's hand in his pocket and tightly clutching the note.

"Did you ever call him?" Dee asked as Ryo finished his story. Ryo smiled, but shook his head.

"No, but in a way, I don't think I really needed to," he said. "What I needed then was someone outside of the situation who knew how I was feeling right then. I think that was all the sympathy I really needed." He looked up at Dee. "It was just nice to know someone would be there if I ever really needed to have someone on the outside listen to me."

"Well, his loss," Dee said, snatching the not from Ryo. "That kid missed out on something good."

Ryo blushed and opened his mouth to argue just as, from opposite ends of the house, Carol called, "Ryo, can you come here for a minute?" and Bikky howled, "Dee, you bastard, get your ass in here now!"

"I got to go," Ryo and Dee said in perfect sync. Ryo stared at Dee for a moment, those haunting, smoky green eyes before him seeming to soften and become younger for a moment. Dee grinned wickedly at him, then laughed.

"Déjà vu," he said with a wink, passing the note back to Ryo with a short peck on the cheek and half-jogging out of the room to see what Bikky needed.

Ryo sat frozen on the edge of his bed for a moment, the note held limply in his hand, then let out a small laugh and shook his head.

"Still strange as ever," he muttered to himself.

Owari


End file.
